June 6th - London hit by tube strike...again
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
London is once again gummed up by a Tube strike involving members of the RMT union.
Transport for London, which runs the Underground, is accused by the union of threatening 600 jobs, tearing up working agreements and posing a “looming threat to pensions”.
Workers point out that they worked all the way through Covid to keep trains running, and do not wish to accept any compulsory job losses. But finances for public transport have been utterly trashed by the coronavirus pandemic. There is a funding shortfall of at least 20% and the railways – under and over the ground – depend on taxpayer support to keep running. I am not convinced that today’s strike, and a national rail stoppage planned for the summer, is necessarily the best way to guarantee a strong future for the industry.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, which you might have spotted after this weekend of flight disruption and holiday hell hasn't been doing particularly well. But today I am going to talk about the problem for people in and around London, |
| 0:24.4 | another tube strike. Now, let's just understand what this is all about. The RMT union, which is |
| 0:33.6 | pretty militant organisation, as you will have seen, that is not shy of exploiting what some |
| 0:41.0 | would say is its monopoly position in terms of both London and the wider nation. They say |
| 0:49.5 | that Transport for London is trying to force through 600 job losses and as a result of the |
| 0:57.0 | Transport for London which of course is ultimately headed by the Mayor Sadie Kahn trying to |
| 1:04.0 | bulldoze through those jobs well they say we're not going to accept it and 4,000 station tube staff are walking out. |
| 1:13.6 | That is causing massive problems as of course they intended and it's the travellers who are suffering once again. |
| 1:23.6 | Transport for London saying experience, expect severe disruption. |
| 1:28.3 | Many tube stations close throughout the day. |
| 1:31.3 | If you are trying to travel, then after 8 a.m. and before 6pm is the time to do it. |
| 1:37.3 | Train services, they say, will be running, but many stations, especially those in the centre will be closed of course there are still |
| 1:45.9 | many other train services which are not part of the underground including uh importantly |
| 1:52.1 | the elizabeth line which is running a normal service every five minutes that goes through the heart |
| 1:57.1 | of london from paddington station via Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool Street, |
| 2:02.8 | out to Canary Wharf and to Abbey Wood. That is still going on, although they warn that some stations |
| 2:10.6 | on that line may be closed where it's also served by London Underground. Cueing systems are going to be in place. |
| 2:19.1 | But it also means that you will be able to get to and from Heathrow Airport on that system |
| 2:24.1 | without having to pay an absolute fortune for the Heathrow Express. |
| 2:30.0 | And a warning that some stations are still going to be closed at the beginning of Tuesday. |
| 2:35.5 | If you need to travel, says Transport for London, try to do it after 8 a.m. |
| 2:41.2 | Of course, roads are busier than normal, particularly buses actually, picking up a lot of the slack. |
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